The Lamp of Fate eBook

She was motoring to Netherway, a delightfully small
and insignificant place on the Hampshire coast where
Lady Arabella had what it pleased her to term her
“cottage in the country,” a charming old
place, Elizabethan in character—­the type
of “cottage” which boasted a score or so
of rooms and every convenience which an imaginative
estate agent, sustained by the knowledge that his
client regarded money as a means and not an end, could
devise.

Summer invitations to the Hermitage—­as
the place was quite inaptly called, since no one could
be less akin to a hermit than its gregarious owner—­were
much sought after by the younger generation of Lady
Arabella’s set. The beautifully wooded park,
with its green aisles of shady solitude sloping down
from the house to the very edge of the blue waters
of the Solent, was an ideal spot in which to bring
to a safe and happy conclusion a love affair that
might seem to have hung fire a trifle during the hurly-burly
of the London season. And if further inducement
were needed, it was to be found in the fact that Lady
Arabella herself constituted the most desirable of
chaperons, remaining considerately inconspicuous until
the moment when her congratulations were requested.

This year a considerable amount of disappointment
had been occasioned by the fact that she had left
town quite early during the season, and later on had
apparently limited her invitations exclusively to the
trio at Friars’ Holm. She declared that
the number of matrimonial ventures for which the Hermitage
was responsible was beginning to weigh on her conscience.
Also, she wanted a quiet holiday and she proposed to
take one.

And now Magda was on her way to join her, Gillian
remaining behind in order to close up the house at
Hampstead and settle the servants on board wages.
It had been arranged that she and Coppertop should
come on to Netherway immediately this was accomplished.

Magda could hardly believe that only a year had elapsed
since last the roses beckoned her out of London.
It seemed far longer since that hot summer’s
day when she had rushed away to Devonshire, vainly
seeking a narcotic for the new and bewildering turmoil
of pain that was besetting her.

She had learned now that you carry a heartache with
you, and that no change of scenery makes up for the
beloved face you can no longer see. For Michael
had not come back. He had remained abroad and
had never by sign or letter acknowledged that he even
remembered her existence. Magda had come to accept
it as a fact now that he had gone out of her life
entirely.

A whiff of air tinged with the salt tang of the sea
blew in at the window, and she came suddenly out of
her musings to find that the car was winding its way
up the hill upon which the Hermitage was perched.

A long, low house, clothed in creeper, it stood just
below the hill’s brow, sheltered to the rear
by a great belt of woods, and overlooking a sea which
sparkled in the sunlight as though strewn with diamond-dust.